A CNN piece on Wednesday spoke with critics knocking the lottery system as a form of systemic racism that targets poor Black and Brown communities across America.
The largest Powerball jackpot lottery ticket ever was recently sold in Altadena, California, with one lucky resident winning a historic $2.04 billion. The odds were 1 in 292.2 million.
Researchers told CNN that despite the extremely low chance of winning, state lotteries still aggressively market the lottery and sell tickets to low-income communities at higher rates, thus misleading Americans to believe it will help them quickly generate wealth.
“These communities are disproportionately made up of Black and Brown people. Critics say the consequence is that marginalized people will be driven into deeper debt by a system that is transferring wealth out of their communities,” CNN’s Nicquel Terry Ellis and Justin Gamble wrote.
Les Bernal, the national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, called the lottery a form of “consumer financial fraud” and a form of “systemic racism.”
nypost.com
